A Marriage of Convenience (17 page)

‘Esmond,’ she whispered at last, ‘Esmond, I do love him.’

So very long before he moved, long enough to see in isolation the glow of the fire, a blue vase in a recess, the seals on his watchchain, to hear her heart hammering like a tight fist in her chest.

‘And him, does he love you?’

He was not looking at her, his eyes deliberately passing her, fixed somewhere beyond her; his voice had pitched on a single note.

‘No, he doesn’t love me.’

‘You told him you loved him?’ he asked with a ghastly calmness, as though the shock had killed all feeling in him.

‘I let him understand it. He told me never to speak of it again. Told me you could ruin him, said I was …’

He cried out suddenly with incoherent pain—the sound a man might make when a tooth is violently drawn. She watched him fascinated and afraid. Because he had held his eyes so long averted, his direct gaze shocked her. As he came at her, her throat made a small sound, the ghost of a scream, that had died before his hand flashed across her mouth, knocking her back against the bed. She lifted a hand to her lips and felt the warm moisture. He was looking down at her, his face darkened by the blood rising in it.

‘Is this how you repay me?’ he shouted. ‘You’d like his kisses, would you? Like him undressing you?’

He reached down and tore her dress violently so that it parted at the neck, ripping off the tiny cloth covered buttons down the front, exposing her chemise. ‘Like him on you, you whore? I wasn’t enough.’ Again he was tearing at her clothes, as if his words had excited him, clutching at the staylaces, tugging till they broke, indifferent to any pain he caused her.

Numbed with shock, she struggled a little, but knowing herself helpless, let him go on undressing her, driven on by his frenzy to break and humiliate her. A curious ease, almost like the coming of unconsciousness clouded her mind, though she was trembling uncontrollably. He stood still for a moment as though mesmerized by the sight of her naked skin and the dark cloud between her thighs. With an abrupt movement he pulled her forward so she was sitting on the edge of the bed, and then threw her back forcing her legs apart. Loosening his trousers, he pulled out his penis as stiff as the shaft of a broom. Still standing, he forced himself into her, leaning forward a little supporting himself with extended arms on the bed. Hardly touching her except at the loins, he gazed down with desire and revulsion, his hips bumping against her with each pumping thrust, until a deep spasm seemed to shake him, and with a low shuddering groan he let himself down on her, sobbing as his orgasm broke.

He lay motionless face downward on the bed long after she had dragged herself from under him. With a coat pulled round her and a candle in her hand, she left the room and moved purposefully along the corridor towards Lady Ardmore’s door.

*

Esmond blundered across the lawn and stumbled into a clump of laurels as he searched for the steps leading down to the lower terrace. The damp had already penetrated his thin patent leather shoes and without either a cape or overcoat he was shivering with cold. But anything was better than staying in the house, and when he tripped or knocked his shins against an unexpected object, he was almost grateful for the pain.

Before leaving the house he had drunk four glasses of brandy. Trees and bushes seemed to swim out of the dim distance, looming suddenly, when a gash in the soot black clouds revealed the moon. For brief moments a bit of mossgrown wall, a strangely shaped holly bush or skeletal tree would take on fantastic shapes in the fitful light.

By the great dark trunk of a chestnut tree, he stopped to rest, suddenly unable to understand what had happened to him and why he found himself alone in this unfamiliar place with aching limbs and a taste of bitterness in his mouth. Then a glimpse of the distant house brought back the memories he had tried to obliterate. It’s the end; there’s nothing more, he thought. Nothing more. But what should he have done? Blessed her for ruining his life? A little later he could not believe what had happened. He would return to find everything the same. Alone under the heavy boughs of the chestnut tree he started to laugh wildly. From the inky sky a freezing drizzle had started to fall. Soon he was shivering so much that he found it hard to walk, but at last he reached the level carriage drive and started back in the direction of the house.

Clinton had planned to set out for Carrickfeeney shortly after breakfast, but, since he was determined not to leave before finding out from Theresa where he could safely write to her, he waited on a full hour longer than he had intended. He had been certain that she would slip some note into his room or contrive a brief meeting; so her failure to come down made him uneasy. Her sang-froid the previous evening, which at the time he had thought so perfect, now troubled him. Perhaps a brief adventure had been all she had wanted. Actresses led such strange lives that comparisons with other women were useless as a guide to their behaviour. Quite possibly she might not be prepared to be patient for the two months he had suggested. And, since he had not explained the precise hold Esmond had over him, she might see this delay as evidence of uncertainty—a device for keeping her at bay until he knew more clearly what he felt for her. He would have to make matters plainer before he left.

Becoming increasingly impatient, he went up to his mother’s room. Sooner or later he would have to say goodbye to her. From outside her door he was surprised to hear Esmond’s raised voice. Clinton could remember very few occasions when he had ever heard Esmond shout at their mother, but with other things on his mind he decided not to try to catch anything that was being said. Instead he knocked and entered. A tense silence greeted him.

At first Esmond had his back to him, but when he turned, Clinton was shocked by his swollen red-rimmed eyes and the sickly pallor of his skin: the sort of face a man might own after several weeks of unrelenting debauchery. As Clinton looked away, he heard a crash and saw that in forcing his way past him to the door, Esmond had knocked over a small table loaded with china figures and ornaments. Without a word of explanation or apology, Esmond slammed the door behind him.

‘I intruded?’ asked Clinton.

‘You make a habit of it,’ his mother replied wearily. As Clinton sat down near her, he noticed how haggard she looked, the red silk
of her brocaded dressing robe making her face seem grey by contrast.

‘Surely we can be more amiable. I came to say goodbye, mother.’

‘You’ve no idea what’s happened?’ she asked sharply.

‘Esmond’s in a rage. The first time this week I’m not to blame.’

He saw a faint smile flicker across his mother’s bird-like features.

‘She told him, Clinton.’

‘Told him what?’ asked Clinton with as much composure as he could manage.

‘That she loves you.’

‘Do I take it I’m supposed to have encouraged her?’ he asked with unfeigned fury. Was this his reward for expecting loyalty and good sense from an actress? He felt that if she had walked in at that moment he could have torn her to pieces.

‘She said you rebuffed her.’

‘How kind,’ murmured Clinton with scathing irony, doing his best to conceal the overwhelming relief he felt. He was puzzled to see that his mother seemed anxious. He had a strong impression that she considered him blameless but found it difficult to say so. After a brief silence, she said with studied calmness:

‘I think you ought to consider what you’re going to say to Esmond.’

‘I don’t have to. The whole thing’s a preposterous lie.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t say that.’

‘What?’ he shouted. ‘If you don’t understand my position let me explain …’

Lady Ardmore sighed and closed her eyes for a moment.

‘I was afraid you might take this attitude.’

‘What attitude would you suggest?’ he asked, completely at a loss to understand her intentions.

‘I’d like you to support her story … that for once you think of Esmond’s interests. Just as she did.’

‘She’s hardly made him jump for joy.’

‘She knew she had to make him want her to leave him … That’s why she invented this … lie, story, whatever you want to call it.’

Clinton stared at his mother in amazement. Had he been made the victim of a performance that had all along been staged for Esmond’s benefit?

‘She told you this?’ he asked weakly.

‘Of course. We’ve talked about it before.’ She paused and frowned. ‘I’m afraid I judged her rather harshly. She’s really a very fine woman of her sort. I can understand why you’re angry, but please accept that she made it very clear that you were in no way to blame. Esmond admitted that to me.’

‘And you suppose he believes it?’ Clinton got up and walked to the door, taking care to avoid the fragments of broken china. ‘I’m afraid Miss Simmonds is going to have to do a little retracting.’ He turned in the doorway. ‘Where is she?’

‘On her way to Dublin,’ Lady Ardmore replied gently.

‘You let her go in the middle of the night?’

‘She asked me to help her to. There was some unpleasantness. There was nothing else to be done. I sent four servants with the carriage.’ She smiled at him. ‘I think you’d be unwise to contradict her story. Esmond has a suspicious nature. Too much protesting might …’ She raised her hands and shrugged. Something about the way she was looking at him disturbed him, a knowing disdainful expression replacing her earlier submissiveness.

‘What do you really think?’ he asked in a low threatening voice.

‘You’re your father’s son,’ she replied lightly. ‘No, I believe the lady.’ She looked at him with chilling directness. ‘We all ought to, don’t you think?’

Clinton waited a moment, as if about to reply, but then turned on his heel.

Esmond sat on the long Tudor settle in the hall waiting for his brother to come down. His eyes strayed idly from the antlers on the wall, to a suit of armour without a leg and then to a pile of baskets near his feet: long baskets for flowers, round ones for blackberries, square picnic baskets. The clutter of broken fishing rods, walking sticks and balls of gardening twine, which usually offended his sense of order, today meant nothing to him. Was there really a world somewhere where people could trouble to pick berries or tie-up plants? Though his head and body ached, his mind had reached the strange stage of heightened lucidity, sometimes produced in him for a few hours after a largely sleepless night: a deceptive reprieve before exhaustion came. At whatever cost, by whatever means, he was determined to find out the truth from Clinton; like a man clinging to a single thread across an abyss, Esmond clung to this intention. As soon as Clinton appeared on the landing, Esmond rose.

‘A word with you, Clinton.’

‘I never wanted involvement and I don’t want it now.’

‘You’ll hear me unless …’

The unspoken threat brought a frown to Clinton’s face, but when Esmond led him through the disused billiard room to their mother’s favourite conservatory, Clinton followed.

‘We won’t be disturbed here,’ said Esmond quietly, closing the door.

The air was thick with a musty jungle smell of steam and moss. Late in the year for Lady Ardmore’s orchids, there were still a few
spots of bright colour among the dark leaves. Wax-like fleshy flowers with vivid blotches of red on white, or brown on yellow. In the damp air the pure fragrance of stephanotis mingled with less obtrusive scents. Some baskets of humble fuchsias hung from the capitals of the wrought-iron columns.

‘I wanted to ask you a question, Clinton, as a man of the world … a man of experience where women are concerned.’ Esmond paused and watched his brother’s handsome impassive face. ‘Have any of your conquests ever declared themselves before you’ve given some slight indication of interest?’

‘When they choose, women can be every bit as direct as men.’

‘That isn’t an answer,’ whispered Esmond.

‘Say what you mean then. You’re accusing me of encouraging her.’

‘Did you?’

‘I never meant to.’

Esmond smiled sardonically.

‘Of course that would have been quite unnecessary.’ He paused, having to check himself; consciously fighting the anger rising in him. ‘Would it surprise you to hear that after a few hours with you, she couldn’t bear me to come near her?’

‘I can’t see that this is going to …’

‘I said did it surprise you?’ repeated Esmond.

‘If you’re claiming the same thing never happened before.’

‘Never in the same way.’ Clinton’s continuing calmness no longer dismayed Esmond; suddenly he knew what to do. ‘It’s really quite touching,’ he said with a faint smile. ‘The way she told me, I mean. You see I’d made my intentions as clear as a man can, and she’d made her reluctance just as obvious. She told me as a last resort … a woman’s final appeal against a man’s lust. “I love another.” Come now, Clinton; wasn’t that most affecting?’

‘You ought to get some sleep, Esmond.’

‘I shall … I’ll sleep for years, but not just yet. I want to tell you what happened after she told me what she felt for you. Surely you’d like to hear?’

Clinton pushed forward but Esmond stood between him and the door. All the time Esmond’s eyes never left his brother’s face.

‘I hit her,’ he said softly, ‘Across the face; split her lip.’

‘How gallant.’

Still the same aloof indifference on Clinton’s face, but the lips a little more compressed, the contraction of a muscle in his jaw.

‘Surprisingly spontaneous for me. I should have said I hit her hard enough to knock her down. Some women don’t weep easily … Theresa always found it hard … but she wept when I hit her. She was too scared to scream.’

Without warning Clinton flung Esmond aside and strode out into the stone-flagged passage. Esmond caught up with him in the billiard room.

‘The best part’s to come. You can’t want to miss it.’

Clinton’s head had been bowed, but when he looked up, Esmond saw that his eyes were brimming with tears. His fears confirmed, Esmond gazed with hatred at his brother’s suffering face.

‘I raped her,’ he shouted. ‘She struggled a bit …’

As he spoke, Clinton’s first punch slammed into his ribs, winding him, but he caught hold of the table.

‘She enjoyed it … the whore enjoyed it.’

A moment later Esmond was sprawled on the floor, his head a ball of pain, a noise like waves in his ears. He tried to tell Clinton that he was finished, beggared, but no sound came from his lips. For several seconds he wondered if he was dying; his sight was blurred and points of light flared in front of his face. Slowly these dispersed and he realised that he had only been stunned. Raising himself with difficulty, he propped his back against one of the massive legs of the billiard table. The pain in his head had become sharper and he felt he might be sick, but little by little as the physical shock diminished, he was aware of a new feeling: a finality of fatigue and desolation so overwhelming that he could only bow to it. With this surrender came a merciful numbness—a kind of peace.

*

When Clinton reached the town of Roscommon it had been dark for several hours, and though he had spared his horse as much as he had known how, the animal was very near the end of his strength. Clinton himself felt little better having spent almost the whole day in the saddle, apart from the periods when he had rested and fed his horse. Being certain that Lady Ardmore’s carriage would have brought Theresa to Westport or Castlebar in time for her to transfer to the Dublin post-coach, he had ridden to Roscommon where the coach always remained overnight before travelling the final stage on the following day.

Past a whitewashed chapel and a row of small shops, Clinton turned into the stable yard of Ryan’s Hotel, the local posting-inn. The clatter of hoofs on the cobbles brought no eager groom to meet him, but a shout eventually roused an ostler from the warmth of the parlour, the opening door bringing a gust of talk and laughter across the silent yard. As the man took the horse’s head, Clinton lifted his spurred heel over the withers with a grateful sigh. His knees buckled a little as his feet met the ground. Slapping his horse’s
neck he told the man to give him some hay and oats before grooming him.

In the shabby hall, which smelled of old clothes and tobacco smoke, he picked up the handbell and rang it vigorously.

‘The coach is in?’ he asked, as the landlord came out from the dining room.

‘Two hours since,’ the man replied, looking at Clinton’s well-cut clothes with an avaricious eye; a gentleman who would take one of the best rooms and not question his bill. Yes, there had been a woman and a child, and Mr Grealey, the lawyer from Westport and his wife, and Mr O’Flaherty the biggest cattle dealer in Claremorris.

‘The lady with the child … I want to talk to her.’

‘You’ll be the lady’s husband? It’s a dacent house we keep here, you understand.’ The man paused. ‘You’ll be taking supper?’

‘After I’ve seen her.’

‘What name?’

‘Mr Higgs,’ replied Clinton. To have told his real name might have been to command immediate acquiescence, but, as Clinton knew, would also burden him with offers of every kind of service, from a stringy duck to a bottle of undrinkable claret, and the best, meaning the largest and coldest room in the hotel. After a pause the landlord called a maid and told her to ask whether the lady would see a visitor. Without waiting for any assent, Clinton followed the broad-hipped girl, cursing as he tripped on a loose stair-rod, his heart already beating faster as he imagined telling her he knew what had happened; he would take her in his arms, consoling, begging forgiveness for making her his mistress before being able to protect her. Her long day’s travelling after a sleepless night and then this drab hotel at the end of it all, brought an emotional tightness to his throat.

The girl stopped at a door and knocked, but before any answer came, Clinton pushed past her and entered the room. He stood dazed and motionless for a moment before stumbling back into the passage and closing the door. In a chair by the fire had sat not Theresa, but a sharp-faced woman nursing a baby in her arms.

‘There was no other …?’ he blurted out to the astonished maid. ‘No woman with a girl?’

‘No, sir.’

He walked slowly down the stairs leaning heavily on the banisters, his sense of disappointment as sharp as a blow inflicted by Theresa herself. For a moment he thought that she might have stopped at Claremorris when the horses were changed, too tired to go on, but he knew in his heart that she would not have extended her journey another whole day for the sake of a few hours respite.
She must have known she might be followed and had therefore chosen the longer way home by the road to Limerick and then to Cork or Waterford. She had fled not just from Esmond but from him too. How else could he construe it? The servants at Kilkreen had told him that the carriage had left on the Westport road. Either she had bribed them to lie or had told the coachman to change direction when they had left the estate. Grief laced with self-pity choked him as he walked blindly into the empty street. He felt the dull fury of a man who had subjected himself to needless bathos and made himself ridiculous. But no anger or pretence could hide from him the fact of his loneliness; this sudden ripping out of hope. From the hotel parlour he could hear the sound of a fiddle and voices raised in song. With her by his side, the music would have pleased him; instead it seemed only a senseless noise in the night air. But he did not long bemoan his helplessness. Whatever time it took, however hard the search, he would find her, and then let her dare say to his face that what had passed between them had been nothing. Let her dare.